 In previous couple of videos, we have covered these four kinds of asexual reproduction. And so in this video, we will focus on vegetative propagation. So let's see what that is. Alright, so what is it? It's a kind of asexual reproduction that happens in plants. So whenever asexual reproduction happens in plants, we call it vegetative propagation. But again, what exactly is it? So let me ask you a question. How do you usually grow new plants? Well, you might say, we take seeds and sow them into the soil, and then you give it enough water, make sure it has nutrients, and then with enough sunlight, it can grow into a new plant. Now that's great if the plants can readily make viable seeds, meaning seeds that can work. But what if they can't? For example, roses can make seeds, of course, but not all those seeds might work. Some of those seeds, if you sow them, they just may not grow into new plants. And in some cases, like in the case of banana, the seeds are so small that when you eat banana, the seeds just get eaten up. In such cases, you can see the chances of reproduction using seeds are very tiny. So how do we readily grow these plants? Well, there's a method to do that without using seeds. And that's what this vegetative propagation is all about. A method of reproduction without using seeds. But how does it work? Well, let me give you an example. Let's take the example of rose itself. Now, like I said, the rose seeds may not be viable, meaning if you sow them, it doesn't guarantee it will grow into a new rose plant. So you know what you can do? Suppose this rose plant is pretty old, it's about to die. What you can do is you can take cuttings of its stem. So you take the cutting of its stem and you sow that instead. Similarly, you take another cutting of that stem and you sow that. And then if you give it enough water and nutrients and sunlight, you will find that they will grow into new rose plants. Voila, reproduction without seeds. So in this example, we took the stem cuttings, right? But you could also take the root cuttings if you wanted. You could also take a leaf if you wanted. Basically take any vegetative part of the plant. The stem, the root and the leaves that together call their vegetative part of the plants. So if you take the vegetative part of the plants and you sow them, you can make new plants from that. And that's why this is called vegetative propagation. In contrast, the flowers and the fruits are the sexual parts of the plant. And so when they are used in reproduction, we call that sexual reproduction, which we will talk about in great detail in future videos. So we can now write this down. Why is it called vegetative propagation? Because we are using the vegetative part. We are using the vegetative part. What are the vegetative parts? The stem, the roots or the leaves. We are using the vegetative part to make new plants to propagate new plants' vegetative propagation. And speaking about leaves, that reminds me of a very famous example of vegetative propagation, which is seen in a plant called bryophyllum. So what are we looking at? These are actually the leaves of the plant, but it's a little different. Because if you look carefully, from the tip you can find there are tiny birds growing. And these birds grow into their own tiny plants, which we call as plantlets. They have their own leaves and their own roots, which we can't see over here. But eventually as they grow, the whole leaf is going to become heavy and eventually it's going to fall onto the ground. And then each of this plantlet can grow into a new bryophyllum. That's pretty cool, right? This is also a beautiful example of vegetative propagation and something you might have to remember for your exams. Anyways, before we wind up this video now, let's put it all together and see if we can write some advantages of this vegetative propagation. So what are the advantages? Can you pause for a while and think about what advantages you find over here? Alright, let's see. So the first one is something that we already spoke about. It helps in reproduction of the plants that cannot make viable seeds. So let's write that down. It helps in reproduction of plants which cannot make viable seeds. To write down the second advantage, we need to remember one thing that although this is the preferred method of reproduction for such plants, you can do vegetative propagation for any plant. Even if there is a plant which can make seeds readily, even for those, you can vegetatively propagate it. So what do you think is the advantage of this over using seeds? Well, this is asexual reproduction. And you might remember that in asexual reproduction, the offspring will have the exact same copy as the parent because it's the same DNA that's getting copied over here. Which means that if there's a particular trait that you like in the parent plant, you can make sure that all the offsprings will have that specific trait. For example, consider mangoes. Imagine there's a mango tree which has unusually large mangoes. Now, if you want to grow more trees like that, you vegetatively propagate it. You make sure that all its offsprings will have those unusually large mangoes. In contrast, if you start using mango seeds, you cannot guarantee that because seeds are formed due to sexual reproduction, which we'll talk about in the future, where combination of DNA happens. And when combination of DNA happens, there is a mix of traits and that may not guarantee that all the mangoes in the new tree will be having those desired traits. So the second important characteristic advantage over here is that desired traits can be passed along. Desired traits can be passed along. The third advantage I'm going to talk about, which may not be very obvious, is that when you vegetatively propagate, there's a good chance they can bear fruits and flowers earlier or faster compared to when using seeds. So let me just write that down. Can bear fruits and flowers faster. Which means if you're in this industry, if you're in this business of selling flowers and fruits, this could be economical to you. And why is this true though? Well, that's because you're not using seeds, so there is no germination. So all of that germination time and everything is skipped and fast forwarded. It's kind of like missing your childhood and directly growing into an adult. I don't know how much fun that would be, but it's okay. Plans don't have emotions because they don't have a nervous system. Anyways, that pretty much sums up this video. And so to summarize some important points, vegetative propagation is an asexual reproduction in plants where we use the vegetative parts like stem and roots and leaves to grow new plants. So it's reproduction without seeds. It's perfect for the plants that cannot make viable seeds like roses or bananas or sugarcane or jasmine. There are many examples. And one important example to remember from the example point of view is this bryophyllum which starts making tiny plantlets from the tip of its leaf. And eventually when the leaf becomes heavy enough, it falls onto the ground and new bryophyllum plants can start growing from that. And because the reproduction is asexual, you can pass along any desired rate you want and because we are skipping its childhood, its germination time, it can bear fruits and flowers faster.